Conservation has much to do with the welfare of the average man of to-day.  It proposes to secure a continuous and abundant supply of the necessaries of life, which means a reasonable cost of living and business stability.  It advocates fairness in the distribution of the benefits which flow from the natural resources.  It will matter very little to the average citizen, when scarcity comes and prices rise, whether he can not get what he needs because there is none left or because he can not afford to pay for it.  In both cases the essential fact is that he can not get what he needs.  Conservation holds that it is about as important to see that the people in general get the benefit of our natural resources as to see that there shall be natural resources left.

Conservation is the most democratic movement this country has known for a generation.  It holds that the people have not only the right, but the duty to control the use of the natural resources, which are the great sources of prosperity.  And it regards the absorption of these resources by the special interests, unless their operations are under effective public control, as a moral wrong.  Conservation is the application of common-sense to the common problems for the common good, and I believe it stands nearer to the desires, aspirations, and purposes of the average man than any other policy now before the American people.

The danger to the Conservation policies is that the privileges of the few may continue to obstruct the rights of the many, especially in the matter of water power and coal.  Congress must decide immediately whether the great coal fields still in public ownership shall remain so, in order that their use may be controlled with due regard to the interest of the consumer, or whether they shall pass into private ownership and be controlled in the monopolistic interest of a few.

Congress must decide also whether immensely valuable rights to the use of water power shall be given away to special interests in perpetuity and without compensation instead of being held and controlled by the public.  In most cases actual development of water power can best be done by private interests acting under public control, but it is neither good sense nor good morals to let these valuable privileges pass from the public ownership for nothing and forever.  Other conservation matters doubtless require action, but these two, the conservation of water power and of coal, the chief sources of power of the present and the future, are clearly the most pressing.

It is of the first importance to prevent our water powers from passing into private ownership as they have been doing, because the greatest source of power we know is falling water.  Furthermore, it is the only great unfailing source of power.  Our coal, the experts say, is likely to be exhausted during the next century, our natural gas and oil in this.  Our rivers, if the forests on the watersheds are properly